Jungle Man: The Autobiography Of Major P. J. Pretorius C.M.G. D.S.O. and Bar

By Major P. J. Pretorius and Field-Marshall J. C. Smuts

The true story of Major Jan Pretorius, a South African elephant hunter and adventurer, this is a true tale of continuous adventure for a lifetime and considered one of the most extraordinary ever written. Pretorius also gives the first full account of the search for the German cruiser Königsberg which had sunk the Pegasus at Zanzibar and then gone into hiding in the Rufiji delta.

“I have never seen a more thrilling story of a hunter’s life. It is full of almost unbelievable incidents, of reckless daring, and of hair-breadth escapes. If one knew the writer the interest increases, for he was a quiet, gentle, unassuming person in appearance. What fire lay hidden under those quiet features and that gentle manner! His very person seemed to be a camouflage.”—Foreword by J. C. Smuts

• Language: English
• Publisher: Normanby Press
• Release date: Jan 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9781786257895

Major P. J. Pretorius

Maj. Philip Jacobus (“Jan”) Pretorius was a South African elephant hunter and adventurer. He began his career in the 1890s as an ivory hunter and in 1919 was appointed by the governing body in German East Africa to hunt wild elephants in the Addo District as a means to avoid the destruction of newly cultivated farmland.

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Text originally published in 1947 under the same title.

© Pickle Partners Publishing 2015, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

JUNGLE MAN: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MAJOR P. J. PRETORIUS C.M.G. D.S.O. AND BAR

WITH A FOREWORD BY

FIELD-MARSHALL J. C. SMUTS

WITH PHOTOGRAPHS AND MAPS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

DEDICATION 6

FOREWORD 7

EDITOR’S NOTE 9

AUTHOR’S NOTE 10

ILLUSTRATIONS 11

LIST OF MAPS 11

CHAPTER ONE—LIFTING HORIZONS 12

CHAPTER TWO—FRONTIERS OF THE UNKNOWN 24

CHAPTER THREE—SAVAGE ZAMBESIA 31

CHAPTER FOUR—WAR IN THE BASSOURI COUNTRY: A MEMORABLE LION HUNT 37

CHAPTER FIVE—TRADE, ASSEGAIS, AND HUNTS 43

CHAPTER SIX—LOST MEN OF THE LOST LANDS 52

CHAPTER SEVEN—DEATH IN THE JUNGLE 58

CHAPTER EIGHT—TSETSE FLIES, ANTS—AND ELEPHANTS 70

CHAPTER NINE—AMONG THE PYGMIES: A FIGHT IN THE BUSH 77

CHAPTER TEN—THE PRUSSIAN HEEL 84

CHAPTER ELEVEN—JUNGLES WAYS OF MAN AND BEAST 92

CHAPTER TWELVE—THIRST 98

CHAPTER THIRTEEN—THE WAY OF A HUN 104

CHAPTER FOURTEEN—MAN-MADE JUNGLE 114

CHAPTER FIFTEEN—CHIEF SCOUT TO SMUTS 123

CHAPTER SIXTEEN—ROGUE ELEPHANTS OF THE ADDO BUSH 138

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN—DUMBOS 148

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN—TRAGEDY IN THE BUSH 153

CHAPTER NINETEEN—TEMPTING DEATH—FOR THE FILMS 158

MAPS 169

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 171

DEDICATION

I dedicate this book

to those staunch young friends

RAOUL LE SUEUR

AND

PHILIP PRETORIUS

who, with me, spent many a pleasant

evening round the fire while on Safari

FOREWORD

I GLADLY WRITE a foreword to this amazing book. If it were merely a work of fiction it would be a remarkable achievement. But it purports to deal with matters of fact, and to relate a true story, and that adds immensely to its interest. The tale of continuous adventure for a lifetime which it records is surely one of the most extraordinary ever written. I have never seen a more thrilling story of a hunter’s life. It is full of almost unbelievable incidents, of reckless daring, and of hair-breadth escapes. If one knew the writer the interest increases, for he was a quiet, gentle, unassuming person in appearance. What fire lay hidden under those quiet features and that gentle manner! His very person seemed to be a camouflage.

Major Pretorius was the chief scout to my forces during the East African Campaign. I had not known him before, and I first heard of him towards the end of 1914 when, as Minister of Defence in the Union, I received an inquiry from the War Office about a certain Pretorius who had been an elephant-hunter in German East Africa. It so happened that he had just arrived in the Union from East Africa, and was actually under observation as a suspicious character, possibly an enemy agent! He was wanted by the Navy to assist in finding the whereabouts of the German cruiser Königsberg which had sunk the Pegasus at Zanzibar and then gone into hiding in the Rufiji delta. In this book Pretorius gives the first full account of the search for the cruiser and of its destruction, and anyone reading it will agree that it is a first-class story. But it is only one of innumerable thrilling incidents with which this book is crammed.

Subsequently, when I took over the command in East Africa, I found him in the Intelligence Service there, and I soon had reason to convince myself of the unique quality of the man as a scout. I had learnt the business myself in the severe school of the Boer War, and could therefore judge of the real article when I saw it. And so I gave him a free hand to carry on in his own peculiar way. Thin, lithe, and colored brown from continual bouts of malaria, he looked more like an Arab or a Somali than a European. With a band of native askaris he would roam about the enemy forces and behind their lines, in close contact with the natives, and with his own men continually mixing with the enemy askaris and unsuspectedly gathering information from them. At many critical junctures he would thus supply me with invaluable information, as readers will see in this book.

While his war service as a scout was outstanding, and his story in this connection is both interesting and deserving of close attention, most interest will be taken in his experiences as a hunter of big game. Here he seems to have found his best self-expression and to be the true artist. Indeed, one has the impression that he became a great scout among men because he was the supreme scout among wild animals. Courage, coolness in facing up to danger, extreme resourcefulness in emergencies, a singular combination of dash and caution, acute observation, and a sense of realities which is unanalyzable and amounts to instinct or genius—whatever name one may give to it—these are the qualities that go to the making of the great hunter and the great scout alike. Pretorius possessed this combination of qualities, and hence was so distinguished both as hunter and scout. Repeatedly in this book he speaks of occasions when without any apparent reason he had a warning sense of danger which turned out to be well founded. Thus, in quite a different field of activity, Socrates had his warning daemon on grave occasions. This endowment is given to some and can never be acquired by others. It is in the nature of a sixth sense. In Pretorius we have apparently such a case of insight far beyond the ordinary, and taken in conjunction with his other qualities it led to a life experience in many ways unique, and to a book which I for one have found of enthralling interest. I commend it to all lovers of fine qualities and great experience.

J. C. SMUTS

EDITOR’S NOTE

GENERAL SMUTS in his foreword refers to the unassuming character of Pretorius, and I think it should be stated here that if this intrepid hunter had followed his own instincts he would never have set down in writing his romantic adventures. Fortunately, before his death in December, 1945, a friend, Mr. L. L. le Sueur, who knew something of his exploits persuaded him to make the notes from which this record has been compiled; otherwise one of the most intriguing life-stories, with its fascinating new light on the jungle life of man and beast, would have been lost to the world.

HAROLD WIMBURY

LONDON

August, 1947

AUTHOR’S NOTE

UNFORTUNATELY at the outbreak of the First World War I was in German East Africa, and this entailed the loss of treasured photographs and records. Consequently a number of photographs appear in this book which were taken many years after my various excursions, but which will help to give some idea of the country and its inhabitants. To those who have so kindly gone to such trouble to help me out of this difficulty of suitable illustrations I tender my most grateful thanks.

Finally I find myself at an utter loss to express the depth of my gratitude to Mr. L. L. le Sueur of Johannesburg, who some six years ago suggested that I should write the story of my life, and has given up most of his spare time for the past eighteen months to sorting out and verifying the material.

P. J. PRETORIUS

NYLSTROOM

July, 1939

ILLUSTRATIONS

When out of the water to feed he opens his enormous jaws

The Zambesi teemed with crocodiles

Lions lying quite close to the grazing animals

Wild dogs...are hated and loathed by all

A Lion shot by the Author from the Saddle

The Way to Kilimanjaro

"Unexpectedly I was charged by an elephant bull

The leopard...selects a well-chosen outlook

Thus I collected the cost of my farm

They were exceedingly proud of their bag

I could only see his head

Dumbos

Coerney

Practicing Taxidermy in the Bush

LIST OF MAPS

Southern and Central Africa

East Africa

CHAPTER ONE—LIFTING HORIZONS

LIVING dangerously is twice blessed—it blesses the moment with elation; it blesses the after-day with warm memories. If a man has trodden unknown trails and landed on lost beaches, when age comes the domestic hearth is a campfire where old dramas are relived.

I must have been born with the divine unrest of adventure in my blood. I should have wilted in a town; even the open and active life of a South African farm, which was my home, seemed to cabin, crib, and confine me. My immature imagination pictured all Africa spread around that homestead, and I wanted to lift my horizons. When I was thirteen my father, trading horses and cattle with the natives, took me on my first long trek into King Khama’s country. From that moment nothing could have stayed me from a wandering life; it was at that time I planned to walk Africa from end to end! Since then for half a century I have hunted every type of big game; have known scores of native tribes, speaking their language, living their lives; have trodden jungle paths not used before by civilized men but made by the animals of the forest through countless years. I have stalked the rhinoceros, the lion, the bush-buck, shot hundreds of elephants (five on one occasion that were charging down on me in a bunch), and made friends with natives who had never seen a pale-face.

I have stalked men, too—men who were England’s enemies. And once it fell to my lot, at the request of the British Navy, to stalk a cruiser—the famous Königsberg, which, after its raiding exploits, had scurried for shelter. As on other hunting trips, on that memorable occasion too we made our kill.

All the facts of that historic chase are given here in print for the first time, and the exploit perhaps makes a fitting start to the tales I ask you to share now the camp-fire is lit and the day falls. Incidentally, the Königsberg adventure typifies a period of my life the recollection of which brings a special glow, since it was then I left for a time the shy paths of the forest, where hitherto I had spent the years, to serve under that gallant soldier-statesman who is now Field-Marshal J. C. Smuts, P.C., C.H., K.C., Prime Minister of South Africa.

Even then, though amid an army, my task was still a lone one. For the scout follows remote ways. It was like a diver coming up for a breather when I returned to headquarters with my cap full of news after expeditions into enemy territory.

But before my life as a scout with Smuts came the episode of the Königsberg. This enemy warship had left a spectacular trail of disaster behind her as she ploughed those southern waters. She had sunk merchant vessels and transports and had ended by smashing up H.M.S. Pegasus, as well as two guard ships. Then she scurried for shelter, for her commander knew the British Navy would be out to get her as surely as, much more recently, another German commander—the captain of the Bismarck—after the sinking of the Hood, was well aware that ships flying the White Ensign were gathering from every direction like hounds round a trapped quarry.

The Navy knew where to look for the Bismarck, but in 1915 the Admiralty had no definite information as to the whereabouts of the Königsberg. They thought she was hiding somewhere on the east coast of Africa and suspected the Rufiji delta, a desolate region of river swamp and jungle. It chanced that I had hunted there and was one of the very few white men who was familiar with the country and the natives.

Thus it was that—without knowing at the time the reason for it all—I was brought by urgent message, the mystery of which intensified as I was swept onward across the continent from Pretoria to Cape Town and Durban, and put aboard the battleship Goliath, on which Admiral King-Hall flew his flag.

I remember the Goliath put to sea with me aboard amid luxuries to which I was not accustomed and which contrasted violently with the previous quarter of a century I had spent almost entirely alone in the wilds.

I had been brought aboard by the Captain himself, had been sumptuously fed, and to the thrum of distant engines lay and wondered at the strangeness of events. Here was I, descendant of the famous Voartrekker general who gave his name to that Pretoria I had quitted eight days ago, and son of a Commandant who on two separate occasions had waged war against the English, now a guest of the King’s Navy.

I had always been a loyalist. Back in my youth I had seen service with the forces of Rhodes’s Chartered Company and, only just prior to the present adventure, in my home country of the Transvaal, had dispersed a smouldering rebellion. I had fought against the Germans and been wounded in the first month of the war. But as the great ship throbbed through the darkness that night it was natural I should be consumed with a tantalizing curiosity, for I had, as yet, no knowledge why I had been picked up from among my small private affairs and whisked on to a man-of-war. It seemed a long jump from my usual life of hunting, where, if I had a war, it was one of my own against such foes as the fierce Mashukulumbwe and the Congo cannibals, or against the animals of the jungle deeps.

However, I was to see the Admiral in the morning.

King-Hall was a charming man, slightly under six feet in height, red-complexioned, and possessing the bushiest eye-brows I had ever seen on a man. From the very first I instinctively liked him. He shook hands with me and signalled me to sit down.

Pretorius, he commenced engagingly, do you know that I am the ugliest man in the British Navy? He seated himself in a chair alongside me, and said: Now I will tell you what we want you for.

Then he explained he was after the Königsberg.

He told me they thought the ship was up the Rufiji river, and their chief evidence seemed to be the loss of searchers that had already been sent out there. Two seaplanes had flown over the delta, and neither had returned. Two armed whalers had been dispatched to patrol the coast. One of these, armed with machine-guns and light cannon, had entered the river and had not come back. Finally the Navy had sent an ordinary boat filled with local natives, but this too had disappeared.

The Admiral had a scheme to construct a raft substantial enough to carry guns as well as men, and on this he proposed to penetrate the delta; but that looked like suicide to me—if the Germans were there. So far as anyone knew the cruiser’s powerful guns and her torpedoes were undamaged. And she might be lying sixteen miles from the coast-line, since the main channel of the Rufiji—called the Salali—is deep. Sixteen miles of approach through swamps and streams dotted with small islands offering innumerable opportunities for ambush!

I suggested that, with a few natives, I should go scouting, first of all to discover whether the Königsberg were indeed there, and then how circumstances could best be used to attack her.

Twenty-two miles off the mainland in those parts lies an island called Mafia, and there the Admiral landed me with a staff of one—a wireless operator. It’s not a big spot, roughly twenty miles by eight miles, but fertile, producing coconuts, the plantations run by Arab and Swahili labor. It had been a German outpost, but on January 11, 1915, had been shelled and blue-jackets had captured it. It would make a good base for me, and I knew of another two-by-four island, named Koma, only a couple of miles from the river mouth, which would serve as an F.O.P.

Just as I left a wireless message was received from Whitehall asking how long I estimated it would take to ascertain whether the enemy ship was in the delta or not. I guessed about eight days. And eight days it was.

A Colonel Mackay, of the King’s African Rifles, was Resident Commissioner of Mafia, and he helped me pick my assistants, assuring me cheerfully that the six I eventually chose were the biggest rogues on the entire east coast, but adding that they made up in courage what they lacked in morals. I preferred fearlessness to any fastidious taste in native honor, and I assured myself of their silence by the threat that wagging tongues would be cured by removal. I spoke their language well enough to carry conviction.

I had been promised that if I buzzed an SOS help would arrive immediately, all ships having been warned, and I must say that throughout the rather lengthy and tricky operation that followed the Navy’s arrangements were so perfect that I could call up a ship almost with the ease one whistles a taxi.

Two days after I landed at Mafia I whistled and got an immediate reply from H.M.S. Weymouth: Will arrive 3 P.M. When night fell I taxied across in her to the mainland with my company and a large dug-out, which had to be shipped aboard because the sea was too rough to permit of towing.

It was a hectic scramble getting from ship to shore at Koma. Not a soul was on the island; all the villagers had been cleared out. Why? This was the first support to our suspicions that the German ship was in the neighborhood. The islanders might give them away, so the Germans had removed them; that was the logic of it.

Next night—dark, wet, thundery, and therefore friendly to spies—we pushed off in the canoe for the mainland. I knew a village near the coast—Kisiji—and I planned to adopt the forthright stratagem of knocking on the first door and capturing anyone who emerged. But in this I was frustrated. For there was no inhabitant left in Kisiji. But if there was no tongue to speak, this little ghost village told its own story. The Germans had cleared the coastal region to prevent the natives from talking. Apparently their logic didn’t embrace the fact that the very act of removing these people implied there was something to move them for.

There was nothing for it but to penetrate farther inland, and we returned to our forward base until next night, when we crossed again, meaning to stay until we had results. So this time we hid our dug-out among the mangrove-trees where we landed. Not that landed seems quite the right description, for there is no ground visible at the edge of a mangrove swamp. These trees grow from the sea-bed up to the water’s surface, where they spread out so densely that one can scramble over the growth. We had a full mile of this unpleasant route to traverse from the edge of this sea forest to dry land. It was raining heavily; it was pitch dark, and I dared not light a torch.

We made a bee-line for the west, so that the next morning we should be among the native population, and there I decided I would stay until we had captured a man who could impart useful information. At about 3 A.M., after having travelled eight miles, we struck a big, wide road which had obviously been made since the outbreak of the war, for I knew these parts well and remembered there had originally been only a native footpath there. Taking up our position in very dense bush beside the road, we lay down for the rest of the night.

In the morning I noticed that the road was used almost hourly during the day by German troops marching backward and forward between Dares-Salaam and the Rufiji river. The enemy was here of a surety. At nine o’clock a very large safari of porters carrying supplies to the Germans on the Rufiji passed us, but there were too many of them for us to tackle. Eventually two local natives came along. I told my boys to stand ready, and as they came up I arrested them, took them into the bush about five hundred yards, and there questioned them.

I told them right from the start that in no circumstances could they be released for the duration of the war.

You will be prisoners, but you will be kept and well fed, I said; but at the first sign of treachery you will both be shot. Then I asked them for information concerning the German cruiser. They answered that it was in the Rufiji.

"We will go to the Königsberg tonight, I said, and you must guide me to a high point as near the cruiser as possible, where we will remain for the rest of the darkness, so that when it gets light I shall be in a position to see the ship and the German forces."

They replied that there was a small hill close by from which the Königsberg would be visible; we could climb trees and sit in them until the day broke.

When daylight came the quest was finished. From a tree-top I had a bird’s-nest view of the cruiser, which lay moored not more than three hundred yards away. She was well camouflaged, smothered in trees on her deck, and her sides painted so that she seemed part of the surrounding jungle.

There were patrols about, and we had to be wary in returning. Not until dark did we reach the dug-out at the edge of the mangrove. Before daylight we were safe at Koma with our two prisoners.

Orders had been given to the Navy that during my absence from Mafia one ship was to patrol the coast-line every night to ascertain when I wanted to return, and it was arranged that I should light oil-soaked sacks on the beach away from the mainland as a signal that I wished to be picked up. Everything worked to plan, and we were taken to Mafia, where Sparks sent out a prearranged signal, Pretorius wishes to see the Admiral, which he knew meant that I had found the Königsberg. Will arrive 10 A.M. to-morrow came the prompt reply.

King-Hall was on time, but not in the Goliath. During my absence the Admiral had hoisted his flag on the Hyacinth while the Goliath was sent to Egypt: and we learned later she ran across a mine in the Red Sea and was sunk with the loss of many lives.

I found in the interview with the Admiral that the locating of the ship was but the preliminary part of my job. Weeks of scouting lay ahead. He wanted to know the range from the sea to where the Königsberg lay, what guns she still possessed, whether her torpedoes were aboard, the rise and fall of the tide in the main channel and certain subsidiary streams. It all came back to me when listening to Mr. Churchill’s broadcast picture of what complicated strings had to be pulled in order to draw in the wide net to entrap the Bismarck.

King-Hall was leaving nothing to chance; when